We’re talking about the movie Hurt Locke tonight, the movie as metaphor. What is the Hurt Locker? This movie is disguised Buddhism because the Hurt locket is Duhkha of the suffering of life that is fragmented by choices, fragmented by divisions and complexity. Hurt Locker is about the simplicity of war because here there are no choices; just on or off, life or death. But do we have to go to war and deconstruct bombs in order to be free of the Hurt Locker?
I’ve spent the last few days throwing out my accumulated choices, all the past stuff I’ve saved and stored because there was only incoming and no outgoing in my office. So there was a bunch of clean-up energy that rises at the end of the year. Restoring order is the way we simplify our lives, Choices like cereal brands have a way of multiplying. We can’t get down to the simple on/off ground of life. When you get down to ON/OFF you have no choice but to be ON, to choose life. Life is not divided at this level. There is no Hurt at this level.
The Hurt comes from divisions of life into choices. When you have to choose, you create the Chooser. And the Chooser is a fictitious person, someone who chooses. When you get down to ON/OFF, there is no Chooser. There is no on separate from the choice because life cannot be divided into a choice. You are not making a choice, like a potter makes a pot, you are the choice.
And this takes us back to our discussion on Time. When you get down to the Hurt Locker, you are not a chooser in time making a choice in time (choice requires time), you ARE time. There is nothing outside of time. There is no you outside of Time to make a choice.
But, remember our previous talk when we looked at horizontal time and vertical time. Horizontal time is making a choice to catch a bus or not. In Vertical Time you are what you do. This is Primary Time, timeless time, while making a choice to catch a bus is secondary time. The Metaphor Hurt Locker contains these opposites and as metaphor generates energy through the tension of the opposites, energy you need to make the leap from horizontal time to vertical time…which is not a choice.
Hurt Locker isn’t done with me yet. What was the meaning of that bomb suit he kept putting on? The movie ended with him going back to Iraq and wearing the bomb suit with a smile, walking alone down the road to meet his destiny. What did that bomb suit remind me of? A nagging question. I like nagging questions. They melt my mind like a hot penny.
It’s the armor of the Samurai Warrior! Ah, here’s the Zen of it. The Samurai of ancient Japan was a spiritual vocation through the art of war. Martial arts and zen went together as it was a surrender to the Force or the Tao. The personal identity was dissolve in the present moment encounter with death. For the Samurai death and life were One. In the union of death and life, you felt most alive. The Hurt was gone.
Now I work with the separate adventures our Samurai warrior undergoes in the movie. For a movie to unlock it deeper meaning every scene is an important ingredient, just like each island Odysseus lands on is a chain in the whole epic. Everything links together to make the whole chain snap into your mind. Seeing is revelation when the whole snaps into place.
I need to watch the movie again. This is the way you work with a Zen Koan. It nags you. You have to find the detonator that is the key.